User:Operabore/sandbox
The Bishop's Transcripts of the Parish Records show that she was buried ‘in woollen’ two days later in Brackley. It is not known whether she was buried in the parish church of St Peter with St James, or in the now-demolished St James' church, which stood in Goose Green close to where Mary is believed to have lived. Part of the proceeds from the publication of Volume One of "Poems Upon Several Occasions" was used to pay for a headstone for her, but this has now been lost. According to Mary's contermporary, Henry Purefoy (note 3 to letter# 412 on p 278 of Vol II of the Purefoy Letters 1735 - 1753 , ed. G. Eland, Sidgwick & Jackson 1931), the headstone is: “In Memory of Mary Leapor daughter of Phillip and Ann Leapor : who departed this life Nov. ye 26. 1746 Aged 24”. The date of her death given on the headstone is believed to be incorrect as the Bishop's Transcript is the definitive record of the date of her burial.
Commemorations[edit]
After the "centuries of neglect" recognised by Prof. John Clarke ("Yesterday's Brackley", Barracuda Books, 1990) in a chapter about Mary, a window, inspired by Mary's work and based on a design by a local resident, was created by stained glass artist Rachael Aldridge and installed on the first floor of the newly-refurbished Town Hall in Brackley. In 2019 the same resident commissioned the stone carver, Bernard Johnson ( http://www.bernardjohnson.co.uk ), to create a permanent memorial to Mary, which now stands in the Lady Chapel of St Peter's Church. The text of the memorial includes a Latin aphorism ‘("Poeta Nascitur Non Fit’" - ‘A Poet is born not made) and a quotation from Mary's poem, "Mira's Will" , in which she foresaw her early death ("My departed Shade I trust to Heaven") and declared laurel to be "the true emblem of my rhyme".